Emily Suvada | This Mortal Coil (Simon Pulse)

It’s been over two weeks since I devoured This Mortal Coil with fellow blogger Sam from Fictionally Sam in one sitting and WOW, I think I lost my brain in the process (Kaleena from Reader Voracious just evilly laughed at our torment). Please hold while I go rescue my brain from wherever it got sucker punched into.

Emily Suvada’s debut novel is set in a world where people are implanted with technology that can change their DNA and, as a result, their appearance as well. In addition to changing their DNA, they can also text, call, etc.—think Google Glass meets your smartphone and being attached to your arm. Through the novel, Catarina (Cat) is a genehacking prodigy whose father left a message for her to decode a vaccine for a plague that has been haunting her world for several years.

Suvada does a phenomenal job describing her world and how genehacking works throughout the novel, providing a lot of information. Although that could potentially be overwhelming depending on the type of reader, I felt there is a good balance between the information and the action, and I never felt overwhelmed.

I don’t think I have any words that can describe my reading experience with This Mortal Coil, it is that amazing. Suvada gave both Sam and me so many emotions, despite the fact I didn’t care for the romances involved. In addition to all those emotions, Suvada has twists in nearly every chapter, some of which can’t even be seen because there is so much going on. Although I found some of the major points to be predictable, I enjoyed reading This Mortal Coil overall and am looking forward to being mind-blown once more in the sequel, This Cruel Design. (I don’t think I’m ready for that!) | Hannah Sophia Lin